Unless otherwise indicated herein, the approaches described in this section are not prior art to the claims in this application and are not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
Audits are common activities in an organization, such as a business enterprise. Audits cover a broad range of practices in the organization, including financial audits, operational systems audits, manufacturing audits, compliance audits, information systems audits, and so on. There are many goals of an audit: add credibility to the financial health of an organization, assure customers of the quality of the goods or services provided by an organization, assure governmental and other regulatory agencies that the organization is in compliance and applicable laws and regulations, and so on. Accordingly, it is important that the quality and reliability of an audit is high.
With ever increasing numbers of rules and regulations being imposed on a business, the workload and responsibilities of an auditing department in a business have significantly increased in recent years. Auditors need to perform several tasks during execution of an audit. Among these tasks, auditors need to send out surveys and control test plans to ensure compliance with rules and regulations that are applicable to the business. Results and responses from the surveys and test plans need to be collected, organized, and then analyzed. In a large organization having many employees and many groups, and having many applicable rules and regulations, the auditing effort can be tremendous. Errors may occur in the distribution of surveys and test plans, and in the collection of results from those surveys and test plans.
In a large organization, different groups in the organization (e.g., business units) may develop their own audit surveys and test plans. In some cases, the same rules and regulations may be applicable to different groups in the organization. It is therefore possible that similar surveys and test plans may be independently developed to conduct audits for compliance with those rules and regulations by the different groups. This duplication of effort represents inefficiency, and can lead to inconsistencies in how audits for the same rules or regulations are handled by different groups within the same organization.